Flesh wounds and purple flowers

An extravagant, tragicomic novel, Flesh Wounds & Purple Flowers takes us into the world of Latino machos and cha-cha divas of Santiago's gay underground, full of dreamers and schemers looking for salvation abroad. One of them is Camilo, a strong-willed queen who makes it out of Chile in the early eighties, but en route to New York lands in Vancouver, where he decides to stay. All the while he maintains contact with a starry network of machos and maricones in Chile, Cuba, and America: an exiled gringa with a mysterious past; a straight lover left behind in crumbling Havana; a transsexual confidante in Santiago. Told in the musical lilt of Spanglish, Camilo tells his story as he lays dying in his hospital bed, recalling a life of sequins, disco, and a plague that is at the same time debilitating and liberating. Fresh, funny, and full of colour and verve, Flesh Wounds & Purple Flowers reads like a gay Latino version of Valley of the Dolls. Shortlisted for the Commonwealth Writers Prize for Best First Book (Canada-Caribbean).